Google's social network usage has jumped 37 percent since May

Google’s social network is still far behind that of rival Facebook but it has been making serious strides in the past several months. On Tuesday, the company revealed that 300 million users visit the site each month which is up from 190 million visitors in May – good for a 37 percent increase.

Google’s chief of social Vic Gundotra noted during an event in San Francisco that 540 million Google+ users have interacted with at least one of the company’s services in the last 30 days. That’s up from 390 million in May, he said, further adding that Google is uploading 1.5 billion images each week. The latter figure is increasing at an amazing rate, Gundotra said, although it’s unclear how many of those images are being uploaded to the social network.

Yet despite the growth, Google isn’t simply focused on being the largest social network in town. Much like Facebook, Google+ is used as a tool to help the company authenticate and identify users at other web destinations including Gmail and YouTube. And of course, it also helps the company serve up better ads. After all, advertising is at the core of Google’s business model.

In related news, Google highlighted a number of new Google+ features designed to boost the usefulness of photos on the social network. The company said they have added roughly 1,000 words to its algorithm that can be used to search for photos on the site and also added a new video service that will allow members to create a movie from their collection of video clips stored on Google+.